Ghee (Nei aka Clarified butter) - Home made recipe from Butter

Ghee. As I tell the name itself, everyone start drooling. Yes in all Indian cuisines, Ghee plays a prime role.Nothing can compete with homemade ghee. For those who dont understand Ghee, I like to give quick intro. Ghee is nothing but clarified butter. It has many health benefits as it good for acid related problems (Pitham in Tamil). But always there should be limit in consuming. Overdose of Ghee intake causes unbalanced levels of LDL and might cause cardio problems. So lets take in limit and enjoy our delicious ghee.

When I came aboard to study, my mom used to prepare me home made ghee. That can last for 1-2 months for me. But after marriage, I start to learn the method to prepare Ghee from Butter. This is because of my Trichy Chithi as she is a big hater of store bought items. Initally even I thought home made Ghee is big task. But I never came to know the aroma that I get from home made instead of store bought. Ofcourse costs also matters. Home made is bit cheaper than ready made ones. I used unsalted butter for my recipe. This is because salted butter will form more foamy when boiling & defintely need a wide mouth pan to cook. And another problem is salted butter cannot be used to cook sweets as there will be always mild taste of salt in it. But salted butter is good to prepare for savories. But I always prefer unsalted. In my recipe, I added drumstick leaves to enhance the flavour better. Its purely optional and you can skip & enjoy flavoured homemade ghee. Lets go to the recipe.

Ingredients :

Unsalted butter - 400 gm

Wide mouth cooking pan - 1

Container for storing Ghee

Method :

I am using amul unsalted butter.  Take the butter from freezer. Put it in the room temperature for 15 mins till it started to thaw.

In the mean time , get ready with heavy wide mouth cooking pan. Wash it well and make sure it is dry completely.Once the butter is about to thaw, put it in the cooking pan and switch on the flame. Make sure you do at low flame & keep stirring for every 3 mins.

Allow it to melt completely. When it melts, you can observe "shhhh" sound coming. This indicates that the butter is boiling to get changed to Ghee state. After some time, once the sound ceased, you can observe a thin foamy layer on the top with a light yellow liquid on the bottom. At this stage the clarified butter will start raising and becomes more frothy. (It is better to use wide mouth pan so that it has enough space to boil).Soon the yellow liquid becomes more transculent & you can observe it becoming golden yellow. Keep it stiring. In the mean time, get ready with few drum stick leaves (or curry leaves dipped in butter milk) and add it to Ghee. Drum stick or curry leaves gives nice aroma to the Ghee & helps to stay for longer time. Once its becomes golden yellow, switch off the flame and allow it to cool.  Filter it with Tea strainer and store it in dry container. Soon it will turn to grainy as shown in the picture below.Refrigeration is not necessary as it can stay good atleast for 1-2 months at room temperature. Enjoy flavourful home made Ghee. Yummmmm !!!